Blood Men: A Thriller

“It’s important.”


“Being a father is important. Not killing eleven women is important. You staying locked up is important.”

“I’m still your father. You can deny it as much as you want, but—”

“I do deny it.”

“I’m sorry the way it worked out.”

“You make it sound like you had a different plan. How many more would have died, Dad? Another dozen?”

“We’ll talk about it when you get here.”

“Go to hell,” I say.

“I’m already there,” he says. “Please, son, it’s important I see you,” he says, and he hangs up, and I’m angry at his arrogance as he leaves me holding the phone. I’m scared at the prospect of seeing him, yet curious too, and perhaps, yes, just a spark of this—perhaps a little excited.

“Who was on the phone, Daddy?” Sam asks.

I didn’t even know she was in the kitchen. I turn toward her. She’s still wearing her pajamas, the teddy bear clutched under her arm, and for the first time I realize that she’s hardly put that teddy bear down since her mother died. The bear’s name is Mr. Fluff ’n’ Stuff, and I bought him for Sam’s first birthday. The bear has fared rather well over the five and a half years since then, but he’s tattered around the edges and grubby in places, and if you asked the bear he’d probably tell you he was ready for retirement.

“It was nobody,” I say.

“You called him Dad.”

“You must have misheard,” I say, and it’s a small lie but it hurts like a big one.

“You did. I heard you.”

“I’m sorry, baby, you’re right. I did say Dad.”

“Am I going to live with them?”

“What?”

“Daddy-Nat and Gramma,” she says, and she thinks that’s who I was talking to.

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know. Mummy’s gone and I thought you might want a new family now.”

“Is that what somebody told you?” I say, immediately . . .

Make them suffer!

. . . angry at my in-laws for poisoning her mind like that. I keep my voice low and calm and friendly, a singsong voice, like when the cat sits at the door and I’m trying to convince him to come in.

“No, nobody told me. But on TV sometimes that’s what happens. Is that why Mummy left? Because she didn’t want to be with me anymore?”

“Of course not, baby,” I say, and I crouch down in front of her. “Mummy loves you very much, I know that—”

“You smell like the art teacher,” Sam says, interrupting me.

“Huh?”

“After lunch sometimes when we have art. He has the same aftershave.”

I smile. No more beer for Daddy. “Give Daddy a big hug, then eat some breakfast. I’m going to drop you off at Daddy-Nat’s and Grandma’s house for a bit. I have somebody I have to see, but I promise I won’t be long. I love you, sweetie.”

“I don’t want cereal,” she says.

“You can have what you want,” I tell her, which is a mistake, because thirty minutes later we’re sitting in a McDonald’s, the day heating up, and all I can think about is my father and what it is he wants to tell me.





chapter fourteen


The media called my dad “Jack the Hunter.” They played the angle up and seemed real excited about the symmetry it suggested. He was a modern-day Jack the Ripper with almost a perfect name for it, the best, in fact, unless of course in the late nineteenth century the real killer’s name was Jack Ripper.

Before he was caught, there was no name for him. There wasn’t really much of an interest. A prostitute would go missing and nobody would care. Another would go missing two or three or four years later and nobody searched for a connection. Then some of them showed up. Somebody somewhere figured out that prostitutes over a twenty-five-year period were dying in bad and similar ways. The media told the country about it, but they had no catchy title. They called him the “Prostitute Killer,” and the articles were small and easy to miss. Then came the arrest, then came the statistics, then came the connection to a name in history from the opposite side of the world and my dad became the worst kind of celebrity.

I’ve never visited my dad. We may share the same name and DNA but that’s all. I spent nine years of my life being Jack Jr. before going by my middle name. Sometimes when I was in trouble at home, Mum would call me Jack-son. She would save that name for when she wanted my dad to deal with me. I was his son and his responsibility, like when I failed a subject at school or cut the hair off my sister’s favorite doll. Belinda would call me Jacky in the times before our lives changed, and kept telling me I looked like a girl.